Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Christmas Videos and Temples, , Mission Conference, and... Oh, Deer.
We did indeed have our mission conference this last week, on the 18th. Every zone showed their video. Our video turned out great! DYNO-MITE. We had a Christmas musical fireside. President Packard sang a solo! He's the man. I love President Packard! I feel his love. We ate and just enjoyed each other’s company. They brought out everyone’s gifts. I was so blessed to receive your loving gift. I couldn't thank Heavenly Father enough for my loving family. It was perfect. Prior to that we went to the Boston Temple for an Endowment Session. I want to get married in that temple!
I apologize mother for slacking! I wrote this e-mail forever ago and forgot to send it!
This past week we had a spiritually nourishing Zone Conference. Due to our limited amount of driving miles, a member was able to take us to the Zone Conference. Again, Zone Conference was remarkable and gave great hope to all of us about the basic principles of faith and repentance, but it was taught and presented to us in a whole new light. After this inspiring experience we were on our way home, sharing insights about what we’d learned with each other. It was around 5:30 pm, so it was dark. We were traveling on a 45 MPH road where there is only a single lane going both ways. It was rush hour and all the cars were traveling at the suggested speed (if not exceeding the speed limit). As we were talking, out of no- where, in within one second, we saw a deer's face in the car’s headlights - heard a large bang - and watched the deer spiral out of sight. The deer had not stopped the momentum of the car, and we continued down the road. There was an awkward silence in the car as we digested what in the world had just happened. Almost immediately we pulled over (about 50 yards from the accident) and ran back to the scene.
When we got there a woman had stopped in the middle of this busy road, causing a long line of traffic. She had her emergency lights on and was dragging the deer to the other side of the road. This nice woman informed us that she was an animal lover and she was in tears due to the unfortunate situation that had just occurred. The deer was still barely alive, but it didn’t look good. We thought the woman would then get back in her car to allow traffic to continue, but she made the decision to stay with the deer. As she was on the phone with the police, the deer started having panic attacks, so Elder Anofils grabbed its legs while our member friend was on top of the deer taming it like a bucking bronco.
Then out of the blue, a young man in his 20's showed up to the scene. He was dressed in his lumberjack overalls, plaid shirt, bass pro shop hat, and gave the impression that he knew a thing or two about hunting! He approached us and his first comment was to ask if the deer was dead yet. As you can imagine this did not set well with our animal lover friend. She was on the phone with Animal Control by this time, but you could tell by the ferocious look in her eyes she was not happy.
We were thinking as we stood there that what had happened was no coincidence and this would be a good opportunity to share the gospel. We know in the Pearl of Great Price it says that things were created spiritually before they were temporally. In this moment of silence we felt nothing could be more comforting than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we began to speak to our animal lover friend, she started panicking because she’d just realized her parked car was holding up nearly 200 cars. She told us, and also specifically informed our lumberjack friend not to lay a finger on that deer, then she hopped back into her car to go park somewhere else.
So then we tried to share something with our lumberjack friend, but he was more interested in dragging the deer to his truck, telling us about the great jerky it would make. Right before he threw the deer in the back, Animal Control appeared and told him he could keep the deer, they just had to tag it first. Oh, well. At least we tried!
I
I apologize mother for slacking! I wrote this e-mail forever ago and forgot to send it!
This past week we had a spiritually nourishing Zone Conference. Due to our limited amount of driving miles, a member was able to take us to the Zone Conference. Again, Zone Conference was remarkable and gave great hope to all of us about the basic principles of faith and repentance, but it was taught and presented to us in a whole new light. After this inspiring experience we were on our way home, sharing insights about what we’d learned with each other. It was around 5:30 pm, so it was dark. We were traveling on a 45 MPH road where there is only a single lane going both ways. It was rush hour and all the cars were traveling at the suggested speed (if not exceeding the speed limit). As we were talking, out of no- where, in within one second, we saw a deer's face in the car’s headlights - heard a large bang - and watched the deer spiral out of sight. The deer had not stopped the momentum of the car, and we continued down the road. There was an awkward silence in the car as we digested what in the world had just happened. Almost immediately we pulled over (about 50 yards from the accident) and ran back to the scene.
When we got there a woman had stopped in the middle of this busy road, causing a long line of traffic. She had her emergency lights on and was dragging the deer to the other side of the road. This nice woman informed us that she was an animal lover and she was in tears due to the unfortunate situation that had just occurred. The deer was still barely alive, but it didn’t look good. We thought the woman would then get back in her car to allow traffic to continue, but she made the decision to stay with the deer. As she was on the phone with the police, the deer started having panic attacks, so Elder Anofils grabbed its legs while our member friend was on top of the deer taming it like a bucking bronco.
Then out of the blue, a young man in his 20's showed up to the scene. He was dressed in his lumberjack overalls, plaid shirt, bass pro shop hat, and gave the impression that he knew a thing or two about hunting! He approached us and his first comment was to ask if the deer was dead yet. As you can imagine this did not set well with our animal lover friend. She was on the phone with Animal Control by this time, but you could tell by the ferocious look in her eyes she was not happy.
We were thinking as we stood there that what had happened was no coincidence and this would be a good opportunity to share the gospel. We know in the Pearl of Great Price it says that things were created spiritually before they were temporally. In this moment of silence we felt nothing could be more comforting than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we began to speak to our animal lover friend, she started panicking because she’d just realized her parked car was holding up nearly 200 cars. She told us, and also specifically informed our lumberjack friend not to lay a finger on that deer, then she hopped back into her car to go park somewhere else.
So then we tried to share something with our lumberjack friend, but he was more interested in dragging the deer to his truck, telling us about the great jerky it would make. Right before he threw the deer in the back, Animal Control appeared and told him he could keep the deer, they just had to tag it first. Oh, well. At least we tried!
I
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